ザ・卓球table tennis

Side-view table tennis you play with two fingers.

When the ball glows red, that is your window. Pick your stroke with the three-layer button on the left, pick your power with the big button on the right. That is all it takes to drive, block and push.

■ Where you meet the ball changes everything
The same incoming ball behaves differently depending on whether you swing as it rises or wait for it to drop. Push it late and it skims the net, low and fast. Drive it at the top of the bounce and the spin takes fully, so even a hard hit arcs over and lands. Swing too early and the push floats up while the drive sails long. Pop the ball up and you will be punished. The tactical give-and-take of real table tennis, reproduced in the physics.

■ Story mode
Eight stages, from lower-grade elementary school (Bambi) all the way to Pro. Drills teach you the controls one at a time, then you train against the specific weakness of each of the three opponents you are about to face, then you fight through three tournament matches. Every opponent is generated with their own serve repertoire and their own weakness, so the same attack will not keep working. Your progress saves automatically.

■ Nine levels of opponent
Bambi / Cub / Hopes / Cadet / Inter-High / College / Open / Corporate / Pro. As the level rises they carry more serves, they have more set answers to your shots, and they stop letting loose balls go. Bambi simply cannot reach a ball dropped short by the net. A Pro will make you push a short backspin ball and punish the return.

■ Four rubbers
Normal / Spin tension / Tacky / Short pips. These are not difficulty settings, they are playing styles. Tacky skims low, dives after the bounce, and kills the pace on a push so the ball stops short. Short pips ignore your opponent's spin and flick the ball flat and fast. Even the best moment to meet the ball shifts from rubber to rubber, so the same task asks for a different answer.
In Compare mode you return the same single ball with two rubbers at once and watch the two coloured trajectories and their trails side by side.

■ Online match
Best of three against someone nearby. It runs over Bluetooth, so no internet and no Wi-Fi are needed - just enter the same 4-digit PIN on both devices and they pair automatically. A coin toss decides the serve, and 11 points, two-serve rotation, deuce and changing ends follow ITTF rules.

■ Practice
- Rally practice: choose the opponent's level and rally from the serve
- Ball feed drill: choose depth, spin, ball speed and which court you stand in, then return balls fed one by one